The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") continues to push an aggressive enforcement regime against participants in the steadily growing digital asset markets. In recent weeks, the CFTC has published separate speaking order settlements against major institutions involved in digital asset markets, including Tether, Kraken and Bitfinex.1 Importantly, these settlements demonstrate a long term trend at the CFTC to pursue enforcement actions in the digital asset markets because the investigations associated with these settlements appear to originate from prior CFTC administrations.
These settlements also bring to light the complicated web of CFTC jurisdiction over the commodities markets. The Tether settlement highlights the CFTC's limited jurisdiction to pursue fraud and manipulation in the commodities market. Importantly, the Tether settlement also represents the first CFTC settlement addressing a so-called stablecoin, and serves to lay down a marker that the CFTC considers one of the major stablecoins in the digital asset market to be a commodity under the CFTC's jurisdiction rather than a security regulated by the Securities and...
